Which verbs are found next to “may well”?
Category: modality
how can (reflections)
Roughly 10% of language points in the English Grammar Profile depend heavily on manual interpretation to identify them. That is when the form has many other more frequent uses, and when the use is highly specific. Let’s investigate point 233 in the category of MODALITY. ‘how can’ to reflect, through rhetorical questions. And how can […]
Would + limited range of adverbs
If you were to choose which adverbs to teach with “would”, could you just rely on the English Grammar Profile to suggest which ones?
ought (semi modal)
B1 to C2 variations of this modality.
used to (semi modal)
Grammar examples from B1 to C2 of this structure.
might
9 tokens left and right of “might” in the COCA: 1 SOMEDAY (RT ) 741 2 TEMPTED (VVN ) 371 3 FEARING (VVG ) 259 4 CONCEIVABLY (RR ) 190 5 OVERHEAR (VVI ) 50 6 CYNIC (NN1 ) 46 7 PROFITABLY (RR ) 39 8 USEFULLY (RR ) 39 9 CYNICS (NN2 ) […]
need (modality)
have (got) to
Collocations with “have to” on the COCA corpus 9 tokens left and right of this are: 1 WORRY (VVI ) 4009 2 CAREFUL (JJ ) 2155 3 ADMIT (VVI ) 1572 4 VIGILANT (JJ ) 176 5 RELEARN (VVI ) 33 One can guess there is a generally negative tone to this grammar structure from […]
Maybe
Maybe A1 maybe A2.
If it hadn’t been for / had it not been for + modal
Point 91 in the PAST category of the English Grammar Profile, we can give reasons with this structure which collocates with: If it hadn’t been for + up to 9 spaces to the right in the COCA corpus (I changed to this corpus because iWeb and NOW corpora were not allowing or providing much information): […]